The Patient in Room 189
by WWBMForever
Summary: A different perspective on the classic short story the Yellow Wallpaper with an interesting twist!


**Author's Note: This is a creative writing piece based on the short story the Yellow Wallpaper. This was written by my Friend Mary Cook**

Day 1  
The patient is lucid but has a nervous disorder. The expected stay will be six months or less. I will be treating the patient on the top floor with tonics and bed rest.  
Day 7  
Patient is showing little to no change. Husband makes visits to the patient often. He has yet to tell her she is at Southern Mental Hospital for the Disturbed. I have isolated the patient in the hope that she will not harm any of the orderlies or other nurses.  
Day 10  
Patient recognizes her child, but shows no further affection. Patient had manic-depression episode afterwards. We will not expose her to the child again until recovery. Bed checks revealed that the patient has been keeping some sort of a journal. Mary, the nurse, has yet to discover where the patient is acquiring the paper and pen.  
Day 14  
Patient is more tired lately. She is sleeping more than usual. She keeps asking the nurse to help her move to a lower room with rose wall paper. Silly woman, there is no such room. I assume the husband is furthering her fanciful idea that she is in a "resort house in the country." She asks again and again why the children hated the room so. We do not accept patients less than 15 years of age. The patient has not written in the journal again.  
Day 18  
Patient is expressing fantasy ideas about bureaus and old chairs. From these wild mutterings I have decided to increase her medication to a greater dose.  
Day 26  
The patient's mother and other relatives have visited for the Fourth of July. The husband is not seeing any progress and intends to send the patient to Weir Mitchell. That will do no good for the doctor prescribes bed rest only. Patient is still confused and even more tired than seems usual or normal.  
Day 30  
The patient wishes to leave the institution. The husband stayed the night to make her feel more at ease. The patient seemed to be catching on that she was in a mental institution, but the husband contradicted that idea and we are now back to where we began with the patient being distressed and confused. On a private note, the husband seems to have taking a liking to one of the nurses.

Day 32  
The husband advised his wife to sleep as much as possible. We have prescribed her sleep medication: morphine and phosphates. All this has served to do is to confuse the patients sleep schedule. Oddly, the patient seems to have become defensive and does not wish to allow the nurse or her sister-in-law in the room. I gave clearance to the nurse to slip her a sleeping tonic and we searched the room while she slept. We found nothing dangerous that the patient could have been hiding other than the ever increasing journal entries. After reading her entries, they show that the patient is extremely confused and seems to have developed a fixation upon the wall paper of all things. Odd. We have examined the paper and there are no oddities in the pure white paper. It is the standard white wash so to be easily painted over from patient to patient. The current patient seems to be seeing odd patterns and arabesque shapes. I am concerned that the patient may become a permanent resident. There is little that we can do for her other than keeping her from harming herself or other.  
Day 34  
The patients clothing has become worn and the same color of the paint in the top room. She has taken up the habit of leaning against and walking the perimeter of the room. I am treating this disturbing tendency with more medication and preparation of the chains and straight jacket.  
Day 45  
The patient discovered today that there are other patients here beside her. She expressed concern to her husband when she saw Old Mrs. Whiticker hiding in the blackberry vines. The husband laughed the thoughts away. I doubt the patient will express herself again. John, the patient's husband, seems to now be courting Mary, his wife's nurse and full-time baby sitter. Mary will be moved to a different sector of the institution to promote proper staff-family-patient relationships.  
Day 50  
The patient has begun to tear at the walls. She appears to systematically be tearing away wallpaper, just like her confiscated journal says. It is moments like these that I admire the ability of the brain to entirely fool the soul and body. The patient truly believes that there is an "evil wallpaper" and that a woman exists behind the wallpapers bars. I believe the woman to represent the patient's ravaged psyche and her mind beginning to shut down to play entirely to the woman's fantasy world.  
Day 55  
The patient somehow found a length of rope and barred her door with it. She calls out for her husband that the "threw the key out the window and it is by the front door." She threw no key, but instead all of her journal entries. Again her subconscious mind wished to explain her actions. The orderlies managed to break down the door and the husband rushed in. She was babbling nonsense about the wallpaper to him and he fainted at the sight of the bloody walls. It seems the patient ripped off her fingernails into the quick while trying to rip off wall paper that was never there while the door was barred. I called for the straight jacket and manacles to keep her from further harm. After examining her hands, I discovered I could do nothing for them. They will continue to bleed if we un-bandage them and will not grow back if we do bandage them.  
Day 60  
The patient has been moved to the long-term ward under heavy sedation and a straight jacket. She will not be able to harm herself any longer. Mary, the nurse, is being moved back to her original ward. The patient's husband would be making visits to the institution to see her instead of his wife. There is irony in the fact that he would have been seeing Mary even more than before with his wife's move to the long term ward.


End file.
